A Dull Ache
by Kwinks
Summary: Liz misses Kid, and she observes the unhelpfulness of ice cream, girl flicks, and sleepovers in making the hurt in his absence go away. Implied Kid/Liz. Slight Kid/Patti.


**A Dull Ache**

_A dull ache is not healed._

The house was quiet without him. But the silence was sometimes the loudest thing she had ever heard. It's echoing, empty tones would ring in her soul for hours, the beating of it's rhythm banging out a melody against her ribcage in a painful, dull ache, and the loneliness of the house around her was tangible; she felt it pressing down with a pressure so strong on each and every atom of her body.

One night, it got so bad that she went into the room with the black and white painting in it, the one where Kid tried to keep the candles aligned and melted symmetrically, and she tilted it so far to the right, that if Kid had been there he would have coughed up blood in an asymmetrically-induced seizure and promptly passed out on the floor.

She smiled fondly at the thought.

She wished, prayed, hoped, that he would burst open the door, come running in behind her (scaring the shit out of her in the process), and demand that she fix it _right now, goddamnit. _

But it was that kind of evanescent feeling; a hope without hope.

Liz knew this, but was still so disappointed when no raving reaper, foaming at the mouth, came to the painting's rescue.

She left it like that. Just walked out of the room and down the hall.

* * *

_is not healed without you. _

Maka and Tsubaki came to visit once during Kid's absence. It felt wrong for them to have a sleepover in his house when he wasn't even there, but Patti had insisted, saying that it might cheer them up a bit to have the girls over.

It was a pretty somber affair in Liz's opinion. It was different than the other sleepovers they had had at Kid's mansion, and they all knew it. There was no annoying little boy to come poking his nose in their business, pestering them not to get popcorn on his couch, or to not spill nail polish on his rug, and if they did, _to at least_ _make sure to spill another drop so as to preserve symmetry. _

There were no calls of "Patti, don't touch that!" or "Girls, turn down that music, it's too loud!" There was nothing. Just a vacancy in this house, in their hearts, that was futile to try and fill up with girly movies, potato chips, and secret, whispered giggles (as if there was still someone else _who wasn't there _that they would wake up if they laughed too loud).

Maka and Tsubaki tried to make the atmosphere a little lighter. They suggested ice cream, and Patti helpfully supplied that they had some in the freezer.

But when Maka pulled the ice cream out of the frozen, icy air of the freezer, the sight of the fat cylinder-shaped ice-cream container did nothing to whet Liz's appetite.

_"Hey, Kid! Have some ice cream with us." Liz said, leaning her head around the doorway of the kitchen to wave the scooper at him._

"_No, thank you. You know I'm not crazy about it, Liz. I got that ice cream for you and Patti because you like it so much, but I'll be having none of it." He said all of this without taking his eyes off the screen of his laptop. _

_She had rolled her eyes and retrieved her head, Patti's giggles drifting to him in the living room. _

"_Oh! And you both should have an equal amount! And if you finish off one container, make sure to finish off another as well, so that there's an even number."_

_Liz had waved him off._

It was funny, because even though Liz had declined any ice cream at first, after the others had polished off a container of chocolate between them, she had the sudden urge to finish off another herself, just so that instead of three, there would be two.

The others didn't understand why Liz suddenly burst into tears, but they were no less comforting.

* * *

_without you it feels so wrong here._

The three of them allowed Liz to stretch her body across the path of their legs on the couch, and her sister patted her hair back from her forehead and hummed a sweet little tune to her while she cried out the last few tears.

When she had settled down, Maka popped the chick flick DVD into the VCR, and they watched the trailers. No one bothered to fast-forward to the actual movie.

"You know," Liz started with a shaky laugh. "We always used to make Kid watch chick flicks with us. Didn't we Patti?"

"Yep. He'd sit right between us, and we'd scooch in next to him and then-"

"He hated them. Well, he always said he hated them, but by the time they were half-way through, he'd be _so_ into them."

"Oh yeah." Patti joined in again, her voice too cheerful. "He'd be all" – here she did a remarkable impersonation of Kid's dulcet voice- "'No Tara, don't do it! Don't kiss him! You're not meant to be! You and Simone are made for each other!'"

At this, Maka and Tsubaki provided commentary with things like: "Really?" "No way!" and "Kid really likes these kinds of movies?"

Liz said the thing she knew her sister was thinking too; what they were _all_ thinking, but were too afraid to mention.

"I hope we get to do it again sometime."

The giggles stopped, and an uncomfortable silence ensued at her comment as the movie started. On Kid's wide-screen TV, a girl in a red dress watched while her not-so-charming prince charming was drafted into war. A few scenes later, she sobbed as she read a letter in which she was informed of his being taken as a war prisoner by the enemy.

"I'm sure you will, Liz." Tsubaki leaned around Maka to grin optimistically at Liz, whose head was still lying in Patti's lap.

Liz fell asleep before the end. Her tears had worn her out. When she woke up again, she and Patti were sleeping in Kid's bed, his scent so familiar and comforting, that it made her nose hurt when she smelled how good it was. She had made Patti swear not to come into his room while Kid wasn't there. They hadn't gone in there since Kid had been taken because of this. But to be here hadn't hurt as much as she thought it would. It actually made the dull aching a little less unbearable, especially with the hope Tsubaki's response had planted in her the other night. She could forgive Patti for making the girls help bring her up here. Just this once.

Maka and Tsubaki had gone home the night before. They had understood.

The four of them never again arranged another attempted sleepover while Kid was gone. As a matter of fact, no one beside Liz and Patti went into the house again until he came back.

It would just have felt wrong otherwise.

* * *

_here__ **you** make it feel all right._

The first thing Liz and Patti did when he came back from the infirmary, wounds treated by Kim, was to force him onto the couch, against his adamant protests, and squish him between each other. As if thinking telepathically, they pushed in on him from both sides as much as they could, hoping to force so much love into his scrawny, lanky body (When had he gotten taller than her? Even sitting down he was now at least a head above her. Oh, Kid. There was so much they'd missed. But they'd make up for it now. Forever.) that he would be stuck there with the weight of it, that it would wash away all the bad, icky things, and make him better.

"Girly movie! Girly movie! Kid likes giiiiiirly movies!" Patti sang screechingly, bouncing up and down, her breasts following her body's movements. Patti missed it, but Liz didn't, when Kid's eyes also followed their movements, shyly, nervously, in the kind of blushing way only an inexperienced teenage boy would; in a way, that for once, had nothing to do with symmetry. _Wow, Kid actually has hormones? When did this happen? _Patti had always done things like this, and Kid had always seemed so indifferent. But his height and sudden interest in the opposite gender were not the only things that had developed in his absence. There was also that small stab of jealousy she felt, that she knew she shouldn't, when she realized it was her sister's breasts and not her own he was studying out of the corner of his eye.

She pushed her feelings down for now. She knew that they would surface again eventually, and even though she was a coward, she knew that she would have to look at those feelings, process them. But not now. Now…they would only ruin things. Things were perfect like this, in the moment.

Patti placed her hand affectionately on his knee, and Liz played with the hair at the nape of his neck, her freshly painted nails rasping against the pale skin there. He grumbled for a few minutes, and Patti flung her legs across his lap, Liz resting her head on his shoulder. But soon enough, the stiffness of his posture softened, and he melted involuntarily against them.

When he leaned forward in suspense as the heroine kissed her dorky, prince charming boyfriend, returned safely home, Liz and Patti cast a smiling glance at each other through the v-shaped space formed by his bent back and the back of the couch.

Liz thought of how Kid would spazz when he saw the mussed up sheets in his bed that she and Patti had neglected to fix. Patti's and her own scents had mixed with his on his pillow, and he'd probably be shocked to find out they'd been abandoning their beds for his own every night. She knew that that would be a permanent thing now. The smells were permanently intermingled; why shouldn't they be as well? She thought of the way he would convulse grotesquely when he discovered what she'd done to his painting.

She couldn't wait.

Everything would feel so _right_ again when he did.


End file.
